By Evan Carden
SA Editor

Fred and Gloria Huggins Longtime Jackson resident Gloria Newsom Huggins was recently published in the Nashville Historical Newsletter and has been asked to write another piece for the well-known publication.

Huggins, who is the wife of Clarke County native Fred Huggins, said she was asked by the publication’s publisher, Mike Slate, to write an essay about one of her ancestors, Alice Thompson Collinsworth.

Huggins was born in Chattanooga, Tenn. and moved to Alabama at an early age. She is Collinsworth’s fourth great-granddaughter and as a descendent of James Thompson, is a member of the First Families of Tennessee. She was a resident of Jackson from 1943 to 2000. She and her husband now reside in Gulf Shores.

“I wrote the story about a subject that is dear to my heart,” said Huggins. “Much of the information I used came from a hand-written account by my great-grandmother, Alice Elizabeth Hill. I also have a cousin, Ray Newsom, who lives in Nashville, and has researched a lot of our family history. Some of the information came from an aunt on my father’s side, Alice Ray, as well.”

She said her love of history in general and her family’s history is what inspired her first-ever published piece. “I enjoy writing, and Mr. Slate has asked me to write another piece on Alice’s daughter, Parmelia Ann Davis, for a future publication.”

In past years, Huggins has made presentations at the schools in Jackson, donning period dress and telling the stories of her family history. What follows is the Essay just as it appeared in the June 11, 2005 issue of the Nashville Historical Newsletter:

Introduction to the Essay

However we may describe the Cumberland pioneers--adventurers, land speculators, intruders, civilization makers, new world zealots, opportunists, westward expansionists--hardship was their daily fare, heroism their only path to survival. Today's essay on Alice Thompson Collinsworth and her family provides palpable insights into the challenges of frontier life.

Gloria Newsom Huggins was born in Tennessee and moved to Alabama at an early age. She is the fourth great-granddaughter of Alice Thompson Collins-worth and, as a descendant of James Thompson, is a member of the First Families of Tennessee. Now retired and living in Gulf Shores, Alabama, she and husband Fred Huggins are the parents of one daughter and two sons.

Alice Thompson Collinsworth:

Intrepid Pioneer

By Gloria Newsom Huggins

On Christmas Day 1779 James and Elizabeth Thompson arrived at French Lick on the Cumberland River. The couple had joined James Robertson’s adventurers, looking for a new life on land they thought would be free, but they had no idea what a high price they would pay for land in this territory that was to become Nashville, Tennessee.

By the time John Donelson’s party arrived on April 24, 1780, the Robertson party had already built eight stations of log cabins. A week later the men in the group gathered at the bluff and adopted the Cumberland Compact. Within the next two weeks the group agreed on additional resolutions, and on May 13, 1780, James Thompson and his son Robert joined 254 other men in signing the completed Compact.

As original settlers, the Thompsons received 640 acres on Richland Creek, near today’s Belle Meade mansion. In 1790 James began building the family’s cabin there, not realizing the dangers that lay ahead. By 1791 two of the Thompsons’ sons had lost their lives in Indian attacks. More tragedy was to follow: a narrative given to The South-Western Monthly in 1852 by John Davis, an early neighbor, described the murder of James and Elizabeth Thompson and their daughter Elizabeth by a party of Indians on February 25, 1792. Thomas E. Matthews’ book, General James Robertson, Father of Tennessee , adds that the marauders enslaved the Thompson’s 31-year-old daughter Alice, along with two house guests--a Mrs. Caffrey and her young son.

The captives were taken to a Creek village called Kialigee, where Mrs. Caffrey’s little boy was taken from her and given to another white slave to raise. It would be two years before they were freed. Indian agent John O’Riley purchased Alice from her captors for 800 weight of dressed deerskins valued at $266. In May 1794 she was taken to the American Agency at Rock Island, Georgia. Before she returned to Nashville, she met with Governor Blount in Knoxville to answer his questions about other captives she had seen in the Indian camps. Governor Blount recorded these facts in a letter to the Secretary of War on Oct. 2, 1794.

Meanwhile, in 1793, Edmund Collinsworth had arrived in Nashville to join his half-brother John Cockrill, who was married to James Robertson’s sister, Ann. Edmund was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, having enlisted in the First Virginia Regiment in 1777 and served until April 1780. According to family stories, it was “love at first sight” when Alice met Edmund upon her return to Nashville in late fall 1794. They were married on Dec. 17, 1795.

The couple built their home on land that had belonged to Alice‚s brother John, who had died in an Indian attack. It is believed that both Alice and Edmund were eventually buried in unmarked graves on this home place, which is located in today’s Antioch/Mount View area southeast of Nashville.

Edmund died in March of 1816, leaving Alice with seven children ranging in age from 7 to 18. As she always seemed to do, Alice took the bad with the good and persevered, bringing up the children on her own. Her son James carried his Tennessee fortitude to the young Republic of Texas where he served as aide-de-camp to Sam Houston during the Battle of San Jacinto. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and was Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme court at the time of his death. Another of Alice’s sons, John, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Daughter Susan married Mark Robertson Cockrill, who became famous for his flock of Merino sheep, their wool acclaimed as the finest in the world.

Alice died in February 1828 at her home, which she shared by then with her daughter Parmelia Ann Davis and her family. The old house is long gone, but in December 1864 it was the place where Parmelia Ann went “head-to-head” with a Union officer. She seems to have been a “chip off the old block” . . . but that’s another story.